REAL TIME SCHEDULING

Correctness of the system may depend not only on the logical result of the computation but also
on the time when these results are produced.

Example:

• Tasks attempt to control events or to react to events
  that take place in the outside world
• These external events occur in real time and
  processing must be able to keep up
• Processing must happen in a timely fashion,
  • neither too late, nor too early

SUBSTANTIAL INFORMATION OF THREE OPERATING SYSTEM

WINDOWS XP THREAD

Implements the one-to-one mapping

Each thread contains

• A thread id
• Register set
• Separate user and kernel stacks
• Private data storage area

The register set, stacks, and private storage area are known as the context of the threads

The primary data structures of a thread include:

• ETHREAD (executive thread block)
• KTHREAD (kernel thread block)
• TEB (thread environment block)

LINUX

Linux refers to them as tasks rather than threads
Thread creation is done through clone() system call

• Clone() allows a child task to share the address space of the parent task a9process)
  
• Clone() allow various levels of sharing between nothing.

Linux PCB contains pointers to other DS where the process data (open files, page tables…) is stored

• Fork – a new process is created along with a copy of all the associated data structure of the parent process
• Clone – a new process that points to the data structures of the parent process is created

WINDOWS SERVER 2008

Windows Server codename "Longhorn" operating systems.

Kernel improvements are significant because the kernel provides

• low-level operating system functions,
• including thread scheduling,
• interrupt and exception dispatching,
• multiprocessor synchronization, and
• a set of routines and basic objects that the rest of the operating system uses to implement higher-level constructs.

SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS

• First-come, first-served (FCFS) scheduling
• Shortest-job first (SJF) scheduling
• Priority scheduling
• Round-robin scheduling
• Multilevel queue scheduling
• Multilevel feedback queue scheduling

First-come, First-served (FCFS) scheduling is the simplest scheduling algorithm, but it can cause short processes to wait for very long processes.

Shortest-job-first (SJF) scheduling is provably optimal, providing the shortest average waiting time. Implementing SJF scheduling is difficult because predicting the length of the next CPU burst is difficult. The SJF algorithm is a special case of the general

priority-scheduling algorithm, which simply allocates the CPU to the highest-priority process. Both priority and SJF scheduling may suffer from starvation. Aging is a technique to prevent starvation.

Round-robin (RR) scheduling is more appropriate for a time-shared (interactive) system. RR scheduling allocates the CPU to the first process in the ready queue for q time units, where q is the time quantum. After q time units, if the process has not relinquished the CPU, it is preempted and the process is put at the tail of the ready queue. The major problem is the selection of the time quantum. If the quantum is too large, RR scheduling degenerates to FCFS scheduling; if the quantum is too small, scheduling overhead in the form of context-switch time becomes excessive.The FCFS algorithm is nonpreemptive, the RR algorithm is preemptive. The SJF and priority algorithms may be either preemptive or nonpreemptive.

Multilevel queue algorithms allow different algorithms to be used for various classes of processes. The most common is a foreground interactive queue which uses RR scheduling, and a background batch queue, which uses FCFS scheduling

Multilevel feedback queues allow processes to move from one queue to another.Because such a wide variety of scheduling algorithms are available, we need methods to select among them. Analytic methods use mathematical analysis to determine the performance of an algorithm. Simulation methods determine performance by imitating the scheduling algorithm on a “representative” sample of processes, and computing the resulting performance.